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We moved to Turkey from San Francisco to continue working on our startup

shafyy.com

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Re: We moved to Turkey from San Francisco to continue working on our startup

#171

Post by superpermutat0r »

qaq wrote: post #51
superpermutat0r wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Split, Croatia. Weather is equivalent, smaller city, lots of foreigners, and a growing IT industry. For a foreigner it's also very easy to just come and live in Croatia, they give staying permits to anyone who comes to just live and spend money (not work) but after you find work, getting an EU blue card is a piece of cake.

Montenegro might be a good alternative with 11% income tax

Tax is irrelevant if you are an employee in your own Croatian company. The paycheck is yours to choose and you can pay the company income to yourself (12% or 18% tax, depending on the amount). Yeah, you lose the social benefits of the future but have more money to save.

Companies here do not mind paying to your business for services because it is cheaper for them too, and as a tech worker, all the benefits of an employer are not that important.

Re: We moved to Turkey from San Francisco to continue working on our startup

#172

Post by eralps »

shafyy wrote: post #89
rolleiflex wrote: post #70

I'm a startup founder living in San Francisco, currently in Istanbul, Turkey, for a half work trip, half hiring. First of all the same caveat applies: if you want to live in Turkey, you have to know Turkish. Turkey is closer to France than Thailand in terms of tolerance for English, tourists get a pass, but otherwise fiercely protective. If you're not a visitor, you are expected to know at least basic Turkish or be a…

> If the country recovers and ends up being a more livable place, I do suspect Turkish engineers' willingness to move to even Berlin will likely drop commensurately. After yesterday's vote, we're on a good path for this to happen :-)

I was going to ask if yesterday's election was a decision point for moving to Istanbul from Bodrum?

I think people underestimate the language barrier here. I think it is not going to be "hard", it is going to be impossible. Even in Istanbul, especially in some districts you can't find a single person who can speak English.

I am a Turkish student in the US right now getting my masters. Turkey would be the last place I would move to for many reasons. First being the language barrier and the corruption. I know the advantage in expense but I would guess there are countries with better opportunities.

Re: We moved to Turkey from San Francisco to continue working on our startup

#173

Post by mrighele »

Jun8 wrote: post #112

Note that although OP's parents are Turkish they say they have never lived in Turkey before, so there may have been a certain level of underestimation about various factors of living in Istanbul (which is one of the most beautiful and vibrant cities in the world IMHO. * Traffic: For those of you who complain about SF traffic, Istanbul traffic jams has to be experienced to be believed. In addition, people drive, how t…

I think it greatly depends on the kind of startup you have in mind.

Traffic is one of the worst things about living in Istanbul, but as a founder if you choose properly where you leave and where to have your office you can use public transportation (which have their own set of problems) or better yet, just avoid having an office until you need to hire people

I completely agree about salaries and food (I love it), not about the rent. Of course rent in the old parts of the city can be very high, but if you're happy with office with sea view in a brand new 50-stories building close to the highway and a metro stop you can spend much less. If you are the founder hopefully you will choose it on the same continent where you live :-).

Re: We moved to Turkey from San Francisco to continue working on our startup

#174

Post by qaq »

rtio wrote: post #152
qaq wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you are a US citizen or a citizen of any other country that has visa free travel with EU why would you care?

The EU offers a lot of advantages in terms of labour market, services, payments etc. There are also reasons why Montenegro isn't allowed to join the EU that could be considered disadvantages. And of course if you don't care about those things there are plenty of other choices.

In Europe with same climate access to sea trivial ability to become a resident and similar tax level not that many :). Say you are US Citizen with remote position making 120K your tax bill in Montenegro is 13k. In Spain, Portugal, Greece etc you would be looking at 3x that.

Re: We moved to Turkey from San Francisco to continue working on our startup

#175

Post by arkades »

CPLX wrote: post #113
arkades wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(A) It's cold (B) Our cops are super aggressive with the homeless. I mean, technically that can be described as "policy", but probably not the way you meant it I used to volunteer for an annual winter round-up, where a bunch of volunteers would get vans and go looking for homeless and try to get them into shelters. We did this on one of the coldest nights of the year, trying to prevent people from dying in the chill.…

(C) NYC has a right to shelter law. Combine that with your B and you can start to see the outlines of an actual policy decision.

So, I've never been homeless, but I do work in mental health. We see a lot of patients that are chronically homeless, and they view shelters as a place to dip into briefly when they have to show that they've got a physical shelter (so that we can do a "safe discharge"), and then promptly bounce. Some won't even make it to the shelter, and have their ride from the hospital pull over and let them out so that they can head out immediately.

There are caveats to be added to the above, but, I've never gotten the impression that our implementation of shelters has resulted in something people utilize in anything less than a crisis situation, for a population that doesn't consider "chronically homeless in the winter in a northern latitude" a crisis.

Re: We moved to Turkey from San Francisco to continue working on our startup

#176

Post by qaq »

superpermutat0r wrote: post #171
qaq wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Montenegro might be a good alternative with 11% income tax

Tax is irrelevant if you are an employee in your own Croatian company. The paycheck is yours to choose and you can pay the company income to yourself (12% or 18% tax, depending on the amount). Yeah, you lose the social benefits of the future but have more money to save. Companies here do not mind paying to your business for services because it is cheaper for them too, and as a tech worker, all the benefits of an empl…

7% on 100k is 7k that's not irrelevant

Re: We moved to Turkey from San Francisco to continue working on our startup

#177

Post by superpermutat0r »

rtio wrote: post #168
superpermutat0r wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Split, Croatia. Weather is equivalent, smaller city, lots of foreigners, and a growing IT industry. For a foreigner it's also very easy to just come and live in Croatia, they give staying permits to anyone who comes to just live and spend money (not work) but after you find work, getting an EU blue card is a piece of cake.

Isn't it annoying/limiting to live in a "tourist town" or maybe that is just part of the year?

It's mostly August, town is small and tourists are concentrated in historic areas. Traffic is jammed but you can walk around, everything is 15 mins away.

Re: We moved to Turkey from San Francisco to continue working on our startup

#178

Post by dgudkov »

inferiorhuman wrote: post #87
asdfman123 wrote: post #67

As an outsider, at this point I have no idea why anyone would want to do a startup in SF. I mean, obviously, all the connections and resources are nice, but you are literally burning investor money on $5k/mo rent. That's absurd. Rent out a house in Austin, Texas for $2k and each of your co-founders can share a room. There's investors and as deep a talent pool as you'll ever need unless you're GoogleAmazon and you nee…

I mean, obviously, all the connections and resources are nice You pretty much answered your rhetorical question there.

The main connections a startup needs is customers. The vast majority of customers live outside of the Bay area.

Re: We moved to Turkey from San Francisco to continue working on our startup

#179

Post by driverdan »

rolleiflex wrote: post #70

I'm a startup founder living in San Francisco, currently in Istanbul, Turkey, for a half work trip, half hiring. First of all the same caveat applies: if you want to live in Turkey, you have to know Turkish. Turkey is closer to France than Thailand in terms of tolerance for English, tourists get a pass, but otherwise fiercely protective. If you're not a visitor, you are expected to know at least basic Turkish or be a…

If you're hiring remote why do you care where they live?

Re: We moved to Turkey from San Francisco to continue working on our startup

#180

Post by rolleiflex »

driverdan wrote: post #179
rolleiflex wrote: post #70

I'm a startup founder living in San Francisco, currently in Istanbul, Turkey, for a half work trip, half hiring. First of all the same caveat applies: if you want to live in Turkey, you have to know Turkish. Turkey is closer to France than Thailand in terms of tolerance for English, tourists get a pass, but otherwise fiercely protective. If you're not a visitor, you are expected to know at least basic Turkish or be a…

If you're hiring remote why do you care where they live?

Because clustering in the same time zone helps collaboration and it’s easy for me to visit Turkey to work together in person occasionally. Also, I speak Turkish, which helps Turkish engineers feel more at ease, if not for anything, so it’s especially suited for them.

Nevertheless, we would hire anyone with the requisite skill set anywhere in the world, so this position is open globally.

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